ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault treats Bentham's Panopticon as a historical artifact and part of a larger history of incarceration but also as a metaphor to explain how power and information function in our society. He then argues that "The modern age poses the opposite problem: 'To procure for a small number, or even for a single individual, the instantaneous view of a great multitude'". Foucault's reading of the Panopticon focuses on how systems and social arrangements create and sustain power or control, and he is particularly interested in how knowledge empowers while ignorance disables. Given what Foucault says about the Panopticon's function—"to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power"—explore fictional characters or real groups who empower themselves by remaining invisible or "unknowable." Foucault also argues that communities develop when large groups of people come together and participate in public events.
